Bernie Masters is a geologist/zoologist who spent 8 years as a member of the Western Australian Parliament. Married to Carolina since 1976 and living in south west WA, Bernie is involved in many community groups. This blog offers insights into politics, the environment and other issues that annoy or interest him. For something completely different, visit www.fiatechnology.com.au for information about vegetated floating islands - the natural way to improve water quality.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

The Zika Virus And Politicized Science

The Zika Virus
And Politicized Science

Peter Schwartz, Distinguished Fellow, Ann
Rand Institute.

Published by The Huffington Post. August 22, 2016

Science today is regularly distorted to
serve other ends. The religious right, for instance, claims that
"creationism" should be taught in public schools as a scientific
alternative to the theory of evolution. The environmentalist left, for
instance, claims science reveals genetically modified foods to be harmful to
one's health. Both groups subordinate the facts of science to other considerations,
whether Biblical or logical.

The same dishonesty is shaping the response to
the Zika.

The Zika threat is causing great concern
at the Rio Olympics, with some athletes having chosen to avoid the Games
altogether rather than risk infection. Florida recently reported the
first locally contracted cases of Zika in the United States. And the Centers
for Disease Control is advising pregnant women to travel to certain I areas of
Miami—the first time the agency has ever issued such a warning for the I
continental U.S.

But among the measures is notably absent
the use of DOT.

Zika is carried by mosquitoes, and DOT has
been highly effective in eliminating mosquito-borne diseases. India, for
example, had 75 million malaria cases in 1953, but only 50,000 by 1961, after
DOT had been introduced. In Sri Lanka close to 3 million cases of malaria
occurred in 1948; 15 years later, owing to DOT, the number dropped to 17. The
National Academy of Sciences stated in 1970: "To only a few chemicals does
man owe as great a debt as to DOT... It is estimated J that in little more than
two decades DOT has prevented 500 million deaths due to

But strong opposition to DOT arose,
spurred by the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Environmentalists
got DOT banned in the U.S. and, eventually, in dozens of other countries.
Western nations, which fund anti-malaria J campaigns throughout the world,
largely refused to underwrite any efforts that I employed DOT As a result, DOT
use shrank—and
malaria surged.

In India the number of cases increased to
30 million in 1977. In Sri Lanka the number went to 2.5 million in 1969. More
recently, other forms of malaria control—such as installing
bed-netting and reducing the presence of standing water—have lowered the
incidence of the disease worldwide. But they are generally less effective than
DOT. In South Africa, for example, after DOT spraying was halted in 1996,
malaria infections rose from under 5,000 in 1995 to over 60,000 in 2000. At
which point DOT was reproduced—and six months later the number dropped by half.

This hostility to DOT was not based on
science. For instance, DOT was said to be carcinogenic, because of studies in
which mice developed liver tumors—but only after receiving doses of DOT
100,000 times higher than what a person would typically absorb (source.)
Further, the opponents of DOT ignored many facts contradicting their views—such
as the fact that during the period of highest DOT use (1944-1972), deaths from
liver cancer fell by 30 percent (source)—or that workers who regularly handled
DOT were found to have no higher rates of cancer than the general population
(source)—or that people who voluntarily ingested DOT daily for up to two years
suffered no ill effects (source)—or that the amount of DOT (per kilogram of
body weight) required to kill mice is greater than that of aspirin.

What, then, was the motive behind the
anti-DDT crusade? It was based on the premise that the man-made is inherently
suspect—that
the natural is good and the non-natural is bad, that human
"intervention" in nature is deleterious and that we have to protect
nature from man, not for man. The millions of lives saved by our
"non-organic" use of DOT—and the millions lost when it was not used—were
disregarded. Instead, the thinning of the eggshells of the bald eagle was
presented as an intolerable effect of DOT.

As explained by David Graber, a
biologist with the National Park Service, environmentalists:

.. value wilderness for its own sake,
not for what value it confers upon mankind.. .. We are not interested in the
utility of a particular species, o, free-flowing river or ecosystem to mankind.
They have intrinsic value, mi value—to me—than another
human body or a billion of them.

True, there is evidence that some
mosquitoes are developing resistance to DOT. But even where DDT's toxicity has
been diminished, its repellent properties still work. When house walls are
sprayed with DOT, even resistant mosquitoes are repulsed and don't enter. More
important, though, one's attitude should be: 'If DDT's effectiveness is
lessening, let's find some way to make it work better." Instead, the
operating premise seems to be: "Man-made chemicals interfere with nature,
so let's find some way to prohibit them."

Man survives and prospers, not by living
"in harmony" with nature, but by reshaping it—by
creating houses and roads and factories out of the wilderness, by transforming
nature into a tool that serves human purposes. The problem with environmentalists
is not that they have an ideology, but that it is an ideology with an inverted
standard of value. It is an ideology that regards the very means of human
flourishing as destructive. In assessing DOT, therefore, if your overriding
concern is to restructure nature in order to promote man's well-being, then you
will focus on whether DOT does in fact save human lives. If, however, your
overriding concern is to preserve nature against human encroachment, then you
will focus on the "evil" of injecting chemicals into nature's domain.
And you will be drawn to any arbitrary claim about adverse consequences of
those chemicals.

My primary aim here is not to argue for
the use of DOT, but to underscore the need

for objectivity is dealing with such
issues. We should not uncritically accept the assertions of those who are
hostile to technology and industrialization. We should not accept any
allegations of some product's harmfulness—say, that DOT causes
Alzheimer's, or that vaccines cause autism or that tracking causes earthquakes —without
being certain they rest on genuine, unpoliticized science.